Swwwoussshhhh

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Swwwoussshhhh

Swoushhhh

Swouhhhsss

Does not sound like the most terrifying world you have ever heard?

Indeed they did not appear to be afraid. They were coming out, chatting, not even aware of that swwwousshhh, already grabbing for their cell phone, others were entering, in a hurry, looking at their watch, already preparing to endorse the white gowns.

John was standing there looking.

He could not understand how he had ended at that place, he had never thought about swouusshhh slide doors before, and here he was, he was outside, it was a beautiful day, it would probably be hot, the flowers were smelling so good, he could hear the kids playing in a yard nearby, cars were rushing in their mad pursuits on the highway, not so long ago he was amongst those cars, pestering against the bad drivers, the pollution, the lousy radio signal, wishing he would soon arrive. That was the normal world, when did he leave that world, he could not really remember, was it the day his hand was hurting after he had assembled the library, was it the day he fell down the stairs and could not even remember falling down?

John was standing, he wondered if what he had packed in his suitcase was ridiculous, so many had entered before him, so many had come out before him. All he had to do was to go through the swouusshhhh doors and somebody would tell him which lift to take, which floor to go out at, which door to knock at.

Swoussshhh and he would be inside the White World, he would no longer be John, he would be “the patient in room 331, did you remember that he should not have anything to drink today”, he would be a statistics, in a bed where he would wonder how many had laid before him, with nurses giving him their trained airline plastic smiles, hoping he would not be another of these annoying patients who wanted to know who you were and if you had children.

Swousshhhh, so easy, so difficult, one swoussshh between life and Whitness;

Another door

Swousshhhh, that is what Clint remembered most.

There was before, once he had gone through that door he would have to go through all the way.

Every week he dreaded that day, yet there was nothing he could do about it. Well there was; Sometimes he came one day earlier, sometimes he came one hour later, sometimes he stopped in the entrance to chat with the man in the chair.

It was many years already, He was known as the man with the basket, as he could not remember what he should bring, he had taken the habit of putting everything in a basket and bringing everything along, yet something always managed to be missing.

The man in the chair was there. He would give him an orange juice with a straw, the man in the chair would drink it, would eat a cake, he would clean up the mess afterwards, when the man in the chair had had his juice and cake he would loose all interest in John, his eyes would be vacant, he would return into no-no land.

The drooling man would also be there; the drooling man was always happy or was his face twisted? He always wanted a coke or a orange drink but he would prefer a coke. His right arm was probably useless. He would suck the orange juice, he would be happy. He would drool but who care, did anybody care, the drooling man, did he care?

That would take care of a quarter of an hour, sometimes twenty minutes.

Clint would take the lift to the first floor.

Clint did not know whether taking the lift was fun or absurd; When the doctor was walking with the air doctor have, the no-see eyes, the “I am not here, I don't see you” air habit they have, and would lift his eyes and see John and in terror either turn around or suddenly find and urgent mission further down the corridor so that he would not have to travel with Clint in the lift.

He would arrive at the first floor. His bag would bump into the lift door, the door would open, the ladies watching the lift door would watch him with uncomprehending eyes, but they would know there was something amusing about it even if they could not remember what. Clint would great the ladies one by one, they were confused, why would that man want to grasp their had and shake it, but sometimes a far gone memory would come back and they would also shake the arm and look at Clint, like a dog looking to see if he had done the right trick.

Clint would walk down the corridor. They, the Whites, had found it more convenient to group all the stinkers at the end of the corridor. They were the old women who would never again leave their chair, if they left their chair it would be to be laid out on the white bed, so think so worn out, that the thin blanket would look as if there was nobody under it.

Sometimes one of the old one would sack into her chair, sack so much that the old one would escape from the chair and be hanging over its side, the head ridiculously peering down at the floor, the arm dangling in some curious choreographic unknown position. Clint would look for a “in-white” to help him get the old one back in the chair.

Why Clint bothered to look for the “in-white” it was ridiculous, they would not be there. Clint would walk to the pantry, first a long long corridor, then the TV room, the TV on all the day which no patient ever watched, then the dining room then another corridor, then the pantry, Clint would wait outside the door, one “in-white” might come out, Clint would knock on the door, he would open the door, he would enter, they would all freeze, the conversation stopped, they looked at him, they were like the birds waiting around the carrion, waiting for the first one to attack to see if it was still alive, Clint would utter a meaningless greeting, they would look, Clint would say, the old lady with the pink gown has slumped out of her chair, they would say that they would come, Clint would walk out, the door had barely closed when he would hear their conversation resuming.

Clint would walk back, he would again greet the old one sitting who had never seen him, he would pat a hand, he would stroke and old memory of some hair that had once made a man so madly in love, a man so long ago gone back to history, he would walk all the way back, check that the old one in the pink gown was not bad, there was really no problem, the old one in the pink gown really looked as if bending half out of a chair, the head nearly touching the floor, one arm dangling, the mouth frosting and burbling, Clint would feel that he was the absurd one walking upright, in some absurd vertical way.

Clint would enter the room, he knew what to expect, he never knew what to expect. Some days she would open the mouth to drink some juice, eat some crushed apple, some days she would not open the mouth, she would hold the teeth as tightly as she could.

Clint would check the room, he would put a CD in the payer, some aria from some Italian Opera; She used to know all the Verdi Operas, she could sing all the parts, then one day she stopped singing, it was not as if she dislearned to sing, one day she did not sing anymore, that sound was something foreign to her, he could not even say whether she heard something or whether it was another of these annoying noises.

Clint sister used to tell her all about what was going on, all about the world, she would move around and tell her of each movement, Clint nothing like this. He knew his sister could be right, that beyond the emptiness there could be another world. Clint preferred not to kknow about that horror. He would pick up the hair brush and the comb she had received as Christmas gift from the in-white, he would brush her hair, he would comb the little hair there was to comb, he would do to her what he did to the cat, scratch behind the hears, scratch the neck.

Clint would take the hand cream and he would use it on her hands and her face. He could not say why he did it, he had always disliked facial and body creams of any kind, their messy greasy sticky substance disgusted him. He would massage the hand and face until the cream was dry.

Sometimes Clint would sit by a chair, he would listen to the radio, he would read a book. Sometimes he would take some steps out in the corridor. Clint would greet the woman who could only sing, he would sing with her songs that belonged to the forties, songs he could just barely remember.

Sometimes when they were waking up a bit because something was stirring inside them telling them that cakes would come, he would sing and dance some absurd steps in front of them, they would look at him with perplexed eyes, one would laugh another would laugh, sometimes they would sing, not always the same song.

Clint would go back to her. He would check that the bath room was clean, it always was, he would check that he had forgotten nothing, he would say hello, he would go out no knowing whether she had seen him go, if she had seen him come, if she had been anywhere, not knowing whether it had been a wasted time devoted to self agony.

Clint would walk out, the in-white would be busy with the cakes and liquids, some of the teams where like angels from another world, some where made of polyurethane coming from a no-no land, some where made of dark material smelling of hatred.

He would take the lift down, quite often this time the in-white was so astonished at seeing him coming out of the lift that it could not make any diversion. Clint would feel absurd; he would walk to the swwwoussshhh doors, this time it did not matter. He would check if the man who escaped all the time was not trying to squeeze by.

Clint would drive back home. He often wondered if it was normal that the day before, each week, he was feeling so weak that he could barely walk.

Clint would come home, he would put back the basket, put the juice in the cooler, the cakes in the cupboard, check if he had forgotten the book, shake out the crumb from the basket.

He would turn on the TV and see nothing.

He would take the book and read the blank pages, not remembering anything from before.

He would wonder when he had become a drug addict.

Care to write?

taberg40@aol.com